


True Freedom Tastes Like Blood

by Tht0neGal666



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Chuunin Exams, Gen, Mild Gore, Training Ground 44, the forest of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 15:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tht0neGal666/pseuds/Tht0neGal666
Summary: She smells like berries, but she has a bug-repellent seal over a scar on her inner thigh, so she doesn't really care. She relishes in the smell of berries, dirt, bear, and fish.It smells like freedom.--or; Karin goes feral during the chunin exams and decides to live in the forst of death now. She has a chakra suppressing seal that she's forced to wear when she's not healing anyone, only it works a little too well; no one short of a senju or an uzumaki would be able to sense her.
Relationships: Karin & her genin team
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	True Freedom Tastes Like Blood

Karin sensed something _giant._ Not as in it had a lot of chakra; as in it was literally quadruple her size. It was running straight at her and her team, and she sprung into a tree to hide from it.

Soon after, roar shakes the trees as a bear tramples over one of her teammates, the other narrowly dodging it. He- Makoto? She didn't really know their names, it's not like they'd _ever_ bother to learn hers- pulls a kunai and throws it right into the bears nose, but he didn't throw it hard enough to penetrate the bears skull. The bear snarls and her teammate freezes in fear, as it swipes its claw and shreds his arm to ribbons. He screams and keeps screaming for help, until the bear bites his head off with a nauseating _crunch_ and leaves. Karin counts to 100, then back again _just in case,_ and jumps down from the branch.

Her first teammates eyes snap open angrily, a stingingly familiar vitriol, and he demands that she come closer and heal him. He's hysterical and enraged and dying, he's _dying,_ and the other one is _dead,_ and-

And Karin's only clear thought is _'this is my chance.'_ She watches, frozen in place, as the light fade from her teammates eyes as his demands turn to pleas turn to a deafening _si_ _lence_. 

She's never bore witness to a death before. It makes something in her squirm, but she doesn't even notice. this is her _only_ chance.

She pulls out a kunai and puts the handle in her mouth to muffle her screams as she pulls out a shuriken and cuts ribbons into her arms to match the wounds of her second teammates. She drops the bloodied skin to the floor along with a pair of shattered glasses for good measure and takes a deep breathe.

Quickly, she replaces the Kunai with her wrist and she bites down just as hard, until her wounds close away with the familiar burning-fizzing sensation of healing and the nausea that comes with skin against teeth fades. She turns from the carnage with a morbid giddiness, and doesn't look back as she flits away from her ex-teammates, deeper into the strange forest.

\--

Karin sheds her bloodied clothes, and is left in only her undergarments as the rest is set aflame: she cannot risk being tracked, and blood is a very distinctive scent. She cuts her hair as short as she can without risking a cut to her scalp, terrified of it getting caught in a tree or on a bush and leaving a trail to her, and drops the strands in a dark river. She's finally, _finally,_ got a taste of some sort of freedom, and she won't give it up easily.

She runs and jumps and flies to the canopy of the forest, and she doesn't go to ground for five days. She never lets anyone come within 100 yards of her, and she draws a chakra-concealing seal on herself that she learned from one of her mother's scrolls, stored and retrieved from the inside of each armpit.

(She doesn't remember the seals being drawn on her, only that they've always been there. Storage seals drawn in her mothers no-longer-familiar scrawl, each one full of everything her mother owned, and she couldn't bring herself to care much at all for the things she left back in Kusa. She had everything important with her. It isn't much, but it's _everything.)_

On the Sixth day, there are no more Shinobi in the forest. The Gennin are all dead or gone, and the Chunnin and Jonnin are done combing the forest for any lost, incapacitated, or dead Gennin. Karin lets out a breathe of relief because _she made it._ She wouldn't being going back to Kusa, or to anywhere else that would use her. She would live her life, however long or short that would be, free from the oppression and fear of being with other, more powerful people.

She climbs down the tree, breathes in the environment, and touches the floor as her new life began. 

\--

Karin loved her new home. She loved living there, almost as much as she loved learning _how_ to live there. 

She's made home in the alcove that's too small for the bear that lives in her cave to reach. It's paw is as large as her entire torso, and she can't help but wonder if it's the same bear that killed her team. She doesn't really care, in the end: She stays out of it's way and gives it fish sometimes, and it doesn't kill her and is so large that it keeps her warm in winter by proximity.

She's named it Atatakai. It lets her pat it's nose when she gives it fish, and she would _swear_ it actually listens as she talks and talks and talks, and it's the closest thing she's ever had to a _friend_.

Her diet is _very_ heavy in protein. Her meals consist mainly of fish or things that get stuck in her traps, because she has no way to tell what plants are safe to eat. She perfects the preservative stasis storage scroll, and can keep food stored inside of it indefinitely.

Speaking of seals, she's learned _dozens_ of them. She doesn't have much to do besides study every scroll she's inherited from her mother, train, and gather food, but mostly just the first one. She learns about the intricacies and history and structure and culture of Uzushiogakure, scrolls upon scrolls upon scrolls, and is impressed by just how much is in her seal: her mother must have fit an entire library in there. It was certainly a complex enough seal to do so. 

Mournfully, she wonders if she's the _only_ remaining person with this knowledge, if the great Uzushiogakure will die with her, unknown in the heart of the village that betrayed them, but she comforts herself with doubts. Surely, _surely,_ there were other survivors. A culture as rich and outreaching as theirs, a people so numbered and clever and powerful.....it _couldn't_ be just her.

When her head gets stuffy with worries or even just too much knowledge, she trains as well. It's exhilarating, walking herself through illustrated kata's from Uzushio, throwing Kunai and Shuriken until they hit where she wants them too, running as far and fast as she can every day until she can run to the other side of the forest and back each morning, meditating to build chakra.

They aren't skills she ever plans on using, not even skills she ever _wants_ to use, but they're skills she wasn't allowed to accumulate before. Skills she wants to have, if only so that there's _someone_ in the world that can fight like a proper Uzushiogakure resident, on the off chance that it _is_ just her. 

She uses sealing ink recipes from one scroll, and is grateful that she doesn't have to use blood or charcoal or dirt any more. she makes ink out of berries in a rainbow of colors, and she starts drawing on herself. Sometimes they're seals, but mostly they're for her own piece of mind. She is reclaiming herself, drawing whatever she wants on her canvas of a body until she can't see any teeth marks. She smells like berries, but she has a bug-repellent seal over a scar on her inner thigh, so she doesn't really care. If anything, she _relishes_ in the smell of berries, dirt, bear, and fish.

It smells like freedom.

\--

The only way she knows time is passing is when the Genin Corps do training exercises every few months. She feels a hoard of small but obvious chakra running towards the forest, and she curls up in her nook of the cave for five days. She puts a sleeping seal on Atatakai the night before so that it doesn't leave the cave until the forest is empty again: She's far too scared of the bear dying and her loosing her only companion in the whole world. The bear doesn't even notice when she takes the seal off later, anyway.

Sometimes, Gennin come close to the cave, but usually they turn tail at the sight of a bear half the size of a house. Sometimes, they're dumb enough to creep close and try to kill the bear in it's sleep, so Karin kills them and dumps their bodies in the stream, riling through their pockets and pouches for anything useful. That sort of dumbassary can't be any real _loss,_ anyway.

She has a small horde of weapons that she sharpens and cares for religiously. She cracks open protected and 'clever' seals on some genin like they're lids to cookie jars, and pillages what they have. Sometimes, she finds home cooked meals and even candies, and she stores them in a preservative statis storage scroll for special occasions. 

One time, she finds a girl who has a week long Raman supply stashed away in a sealing scroll, and her mouth waters. She almost feels bad for killing someone with such good taste, but the girl literally tried to poke a bear with a stick.

(Or, well, Kunai. Same difference.)

\--

There are two other chakra signatures that come to the forest regularly. She knows this for a fact, because her chakra-sensing range has grown so wide that it covers all of the forest, even when she isn't paying much attention. 

The first is the lady that officiated the Chunnin exams in the first place. The woman that feels jagged and uncouth, and a little bit like snakes. She circles the forest nearly every day and enters it when other people sneak into it. Other people don't sneak in very often: the lady is a very effective and cruel deterrent.

The second is a man in a cat mask who apparently fills in for the lady when she's busy. He feels cold but full of life, contradictory enough to make her a little uncomfortable. He does the same thing the lady does, but her also grows new trees. 

Karin tries to avoid them. They feel different then anything else in the forest. They feel _human_. 

They feel _dangerous._

\--

**Author's Note:**

> and then Anko and/or Tenzou find little baby Karin and adopt her <3 lmao I'm not writing more of this


End file.
